[furrylogic]

We are probably 5 to 10 years away from OS 11, but it is interesting to consider what new underlying technological innovations will enable. Often the technologies that are in the server world and supercomputing space eventually trickle down to consumer products.

Example 1: Network computing
For example, within this time period we can be sure to see network speeds increase by 10 to 100 x. That would mean that connections between computers within a LAN will be at a point to enable sophisticated distributed computing. It would be wonderful if the OS supported a network, where all computing power was equally distributed to all connected computers. Since most desktop computers spend the bulk of their time doing nothing, that means a lot of power. It also means that "older" computers can have a long life. 10 old boxes could easily be kept alive for their computing power. Any individual desktop doesn't need to be upgraded, instead you just add some more computing power to the overall network. Hopefully every application (e.g. Photoshop and Maya) would natively take advantage of this distributed computing.

Example 2: Hidden storage with ubiquitous access
With storage capacities doubling each year and the expectation that this year we will see 1 Tb hard drives, we could expect to see 100 Tb+ at the desktop level. At that point all home movies, music and photos along with purchased movies should be stored on a hard drive, not on some other medium. We can expect to see redundancy as common and companies set up to remotely back up all of this great personal content.

At the same time, Internet connections at home will increase to the point of allowing a person to access this content from anywhere without a download delay. So, forget about the HD DVD and BluRay debate. It will all be digital download. Apple will then need to update their DRM for music and movies to allow remote access and backups. Plus, expect the quality to leap forwards. No 128 Kb audio. Think Apple Lossless as the minimum standard, remember disk space doesn't matter anymore.

Example 3: Reliability
If you look at how the mainframe world used to do this and how the server world is now doing this, it is all about redundancy and alerts. Wouldn't it be great if you got a little message on your mobile phone or email that says that one of your hard drives has failed and that if you just click "here" a new one will be sent to you right away. Similarly, if you have a quad processor, who cares if one fails, somewhere on the network there are enough resources to pick up the slack.

What else could you imagine coming to the desktop, based on new technology milestones being reached?

[Landos Mustache]

I really think it is too far off for anyone to make any educated guesses.

Sure people will say 3D desktop, voice controlled but none of that is that strong of an imagination.

I think we need to see where 10.5 takes us with core animation before we can even guess.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by furrylogic

We are probably 5 to 10 years away from OS 11, but it is interesting to consider what new underlying technological innovations will enable. Often the technologies that are in the server world and supercomputing space eventually trickle down to consumer products.

Example 1: Network computing
For example, within this time period we can be sure to see network speeds increase by 10 to 100 x. That would mean that connections between computers within a LAN will be at a point to enable sophisticated distributed computing. It would be wonderful if the OS supported a network, where all computing power was equally distributed to all connected computers.

You wouldn't want it to be distributed truly equally. Some machines can handle more load than others, both because of innate hardware concerns and because a machine which is already under load can only handle so much more. The real trick with distributed computing is figuring out how to effectively distribute the load in such a way that each machine gets as much as it can handle, but not more than that.

Also, it's not really possible to distribute all load across multiple computers. Some tasks lend themselves well to being split up like this, but others don't. Even among those which do, they usually have to be coded in certain ways which lend themselves to this sort of parallelism, and not all coders have the knowhow or desire to deal with that.

[furrylogic]

Originally Posted by Millennium

You wouldn't want it to be distributed truly equally. Some machines can handle more load than others, both because of innate hardware concerns and because a machine which is already under load can only handle so much more. The real trick with distributed computing is figuring out how to effectively distribute the load in such a way that each machine gets as much as it can handle, but not more than that.

Also, it's not really possible to distribute all load across multiple computers. Some tasks lend themselves well to being split up like this, but others don't. Even among those which do, they usually have to be coded in certain ways which lend themselves to this sort of parallelism, and not all coders have the knowhow or desire to deal with that.

I would assume that things like GUI rendering would be done locally and that there would be a logical way to farm out the more compute intensive tasks. For the user, there would be a simple meter, where they can choose how generous they want to be with their resources and that each computer would talk with each other to do an intelligent "team load balancing". Obviously, that would mean that each computer would have to be able to also quickly free up computing power for local activity as it was needed.

But, basically wouldn't it be possible to abstract some of the complexities for developers, so that they could develop for this kind of an environment more easily?

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

Sure people will say 3D desktop, voice controlled but none of that is that strong of an imagination.

Apparently no one has a strong enough imagination to figure out how this can be done in a practical sense with any sort of usability yet. If no one can do that, then there isn't much hope for any sort of tangible improvements on our "crummy" 2D-interfaces other than "that it looks cool in teh movies!1".

[Mithras]

I'm looking forward to the new iCards and Mail stationary, myself.

[- - e r i k - -]

Mmmmm... 3D Stationary!

[Kerrigan]

I cannot wait for the 3D Excite Extreme.

[SLiMeX]

OS 11? I'm having a hard time waiting for 10.5 to be released. One step at a time!

[Gee4orce]

I hope Apple capitalises on the obvious marketing opportunity:

This OS goes to XI

[furrylogic]

I know that OpenDoc was one of the projects that Steve Jobs killed, but it was very interesting. After having played with an early beta of it, I left wanting to have a universal document file format. The benefit of that being that you only have one kind of document...ever! You then use different "editors" to edit various elements within your document. You use a bitmap editor (e.g. Photoshop) to edit the images and you use a text editor (e.g. Word) to edit the text. Depending on what element you select, will call up the respective tools. If you receive a document with a component, for which you don't have an editor, that is ok. It is shown in a static form, for which you can't edit. But, at least you can view it and move it around the "page".

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by furrylogic

I know that OpenDoc was one of the projects that Steve Jobs killed, but it was very interesting.

Steve didn't Start it OR kill it actually.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by furrylogic

But, basically wouldn't it be possible to abstract some of the complexities for developers, so that they could develop for this kind of an environment more easily?

Xgrid

Anyway, I think it will allow me to control my flying car remotely.

[furrylogic]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

Steve didn't Start it OR kill it actually.

Does that mean that although at one point development stopped, that there may be some life left in OpenDoc? Or is there more contemporary thinking that says that OpenDoc concepts aren't the right direction to go?

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Xgrid

Anyway, I think it will allow me to control my flying car remotely.

Xgrid is interesting. But, could this power be brought down from the server world to the day-to-day world? Or is Xgrid going to be eternally too complex for such an application? For example, could a small 5 man design studio without a technical team connect all Macs and have their graphics software super-powered?

[Landos Mustache]

Originally Posted by furrylogic

Does that mean that although at one point development stopped, that there may be some life left in OpenDoc? Or is there more contemporary thinking that says that OpenDoc concepts aren't the right direction to go?

From what I remember developers ignored it.

[Salty]

I think OS 11 will have a new Finder.

[Javizun]

os 11 will be tiger redefined

[- - e r i k - -]

Originally Posted by Landos Mustache

From what I remember developers ignored it.

...and rightly so. Doing otherwise would kill their livelihood, now wouldn't it?